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April 11, 2015

The Ghost uses a gyro-stabilized dual-pontoon supercavitating hull to run at top speed through 10-foot seas. Called small waterplane-area twin-hull (SWATH), it is controlled by 22 computer-controlled underwater control surfaces. When at rest or moving slowly, the Ghost sits in the water on its centerline module. At eight knots or faster, the high-grade marine aluminum buoyant hulls lift the vessel and achieve full stability.

Propulsion on the prototype is provided by T53-703 turboshaft engines, with the company planning to replace them with the General Electric T700 turboshaft.

The Ghost has achieved speeds of over 30 knots, and is being tested to 50 knots. It can perform several different missions including anti-surface warfare (ASuW), anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and mine countermeasures (MCM): ASuW armament consists of the M197 20mm rotary cannon and launch tubes that expel exhaust downward between the struts of the SWATH hulls, concealing and dissipating the thermal signature of the launch for BGM-176B Griffin missiles and Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rockets, with an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor and radar; an ASW version could be equipped with an EO/IR sensor, radar, sonobuoy launch tubes, a dipping sonar, and four aft-firing torpedo tubes; an MCM version could be equipped with a towing boom to lower and raise two towed mine-hunting sonars, such as the Kline 5000 or Raytheon AN/AQS-20A.

The current Ghost costs $10 million per copy, is crewed by 3-5 sailors, and can be partially disassembled to fit in a C-17 Globemaster III for transport if needed.

Saab’s Soft Armour system offers protection against ballistic penetration up to NATO 7.62 mm AP ammunition (STANAG level III). The system is a box concept filled with hard ceramic balls. The system is especially designed to enhance survivability and can be fitted to any structure prior to missions, or even retrofitted to existing structures in operational theatre.

A unique ceramic material protects against ballistic penetration. Soft Armour is a patented ballistic protection technology that provides security for people in vulnerable environments. Soft Armour also protects critical equipment and facilities. Soft Armour protects against all small arms ammunition including armour piercing. The system has a lower total cost than ceramic and composite protection, with reusability, multi-hit capabilities and high flexibility.

Some idiot in NJ decides that she will provide comfort to a murderer by having her third grade class write letters of support to him.

TRENTON, N.J. — A teacher in New Jersey who assigned her third-grade class to write “get well” letters to a sick inmate convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer was suspended Friday, the school superintendent said.

Orange School Superintendent Ronald Lee said in a statement that school administrators “vehemently deny” any knowledge of Marylin Zuniga’s assignment. Preliminary inquiries found that Zuniga did not seek approval from administrators nor were parents notified, Lee said.

The letters were delivered to Mumia Abu-Jamal in prison following his hospitalization last month for what his family said was treatment for complications from diabetes. The former Black Panther is serving life behind bars for the 1981 murder of white Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

This class must now write letters of condolence to Officer Faulkner' widow and more letters to the Gov. demanding that this POS being kept alive at taxpayer expense be summarily executed. Oh, and fire her ass immediately.

Back in 2014 Netherlands-based custom motorcycle shop Revatu Customs unveiled Black Pearl, a motorcycle powered by a functioning steam engine. The bike may look fierce but it is by no means a speed demon–it tops out at about 5 MPH.

April 9, 2015

I don't care much for Duke University, not at all. But I am sorta getting fond of their basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, especially when he speaks his mind.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s team, the Duke Blue Devils, just won the NCAA Championships, and he used his time in the spotlight to let the world know exactly what he thinks about Obama.

Coach K accepted an award at an Army awards conference in front of Army officers and defense contractors. There, he criticized Obama for announcing that he didn’t plan to deploy troops to fight ISIS.

“I know it’s upsetting to many of you when you hear ‘no boots on the ground,’ ” Coach K said, according to Conservative Tribune. “It upsets me too because that’s like saying I’m not going to play two of my best players.”

He went on to talk about the fundamentals of war, saying, “It’s about letting your opponent know that we are going to use our best players. Now whether you use them or not, that’s up to the coach. You never tell an opponent you are not going to use them …”

Coach K has been vocal with criticizing Obama in the past. Back in 2009, when Obama picked North Carolina to win the NCAA March Madness tournament, Coach K publicly advised Obama to spend more time focusing on the economy instead of filling out brackets.

A veteran himself, Coach K also made a point to honor the army during his speech, something that Obama would never do.

April 8, 2015

For those of you too young to remember 1965, that was the year that my favorite Chevy Impala was made. My dad borrowed my Uncle Joe's '65 Impala to drive me to college in 1967. His had the black vinyl top.

I was driving a 1965 Tempest when I graduated from college in 1971 . This was another great car; I bought it from an upstate NY farmer for $600 in 1970. Yeah - it was that color, a 4 dr.

Other things in 1965 weren't so great. The threat of nuclear war was one of them.

And that's where we are again. I can remember waking up in a cold sweat as a kid when the sirens went off at night. I didn't know if they were being used to summon the volunteer firemen to the station house or the harbinger of a nuclear strike directed at NYC only 45 miles away.

Washington (AFP) - The US military command that scans North America's skies for enemy missiles and aircraft plans to move its communications gear to a Cold War-era mountain bunker, officers said.

The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command's sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, military officers said.

The Pentagon last week announced a $700 million contract with Raytheon Corporation to oversee the work for North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command.

Admiral William Gortney, head of NORAD and Northern Command, said that "because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain's built, it's EMP-hardened."

"And so, there's a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there," Gortney told reporters.

"My primary concern was... are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I'm not at liberty to discuss who's moving in there," he said.

The Cheyenne mountain bunker is a half-acre cavern carved into a mountain in the 1960s that was designed to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack. From inside the massive complex, airmen were poised to send warnings that could trigger the launch of nuclear missiles.

April 7, 2015

For years, the federal government has advised Americans that they are eating too much salt, and that this excess contributes yearly to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

But unknown to many shoppers urged to buy foods that are “low sodium” and “low salt,” this longstanding warning has come under assault by scientists who say that typical American salt consumption is without risk.

Moreover, according to studies published in recent years by pillars of the medical community, the low levels of salt recommended by the government might actually be dangerous.

A Florida man who stripped off his clothes and ran through Fort Lauderdale traffic to escape imaginary killers hot on his heels was high on “flakka,” the synthetic drug that appears poised to supplant bath salts as the leading cause of hallucinatory havoc, cops report.

Following his apprehension, Matthew Kenney, 34, told police that after smoking the synthetic drug he began fleeing pursuers who had stolen his clothing and were intent on murdering him.

All narcotic compounds should be categorized as to their propensity to get you naked. A Category I Narcotic would get you shirtless after smoking or snorting a gram. A Category II Narcotic would have you down to underwear and socks after doing two grams. A Category III Narcotic would have you naked on the interstate dry humping a guard rail after sniffing the wrapper.

“There was blood all over the president and first lady’s bed,” writes former White House reporter Kate Anderson Brower. “A member of the residence staff got a frantic call from the maid who found the mess. Someone needed to come quickly and inspect the damage. The blood was Bill Clinton‘s. The president had to get several stitches to his head.”

But what difference does it make? So buck up Bill, Ambassador Stevens didn't bitch about his treatment at the hands of your wife.

April 5, 2015

In the beginning Man was not meant to die. But his eternal life was predicated on the condition that he would live in a perfect, sinless world in harmony with his Creator. That has not been the case for eons.

Most men fear death because, no matter what they profess, they fear the unknown or subconsciously fear Judgement. People of means have long sought to defeat death, whether through the vaunted Fountain of Youth, emulsions, ointments, spells or vitamins.

But now as the secrets of DNA are unraveled, it becomes possible that someday people will live long past the three score and ten average life span of today.

Seated at the head of a table for 12 with a view of the city’s soaring skyline, Peter Thiel was deep in conversation with his guests, eclectic scientists whose research was considered radical, even heretical.

It was 2004 and Thiel had recently made a tidy fortune selling PayPal, which he co-founded, to eBay. He had spent what he wanted on himself — a posh penthouse suite at the Four Seasons Hotel and a silver Ferrari — and was now soliciting ideas to do good with his money.

The Human Upgrade:
Using their ideas and their billions, the visionaries who created Silicon Valley’s biggest technology firms are trying to transform the most complicated system in existence: the human body.

[...]The entrepreneurs are driven by a certitude that rebuilding, regenerating and reprogramming patients’ organs, limbs, cells and DNA will enable people to live longer and better. The work they are funding includes hunting for the secrets of living organisms with insanely long lives, engineering microscopic nanobots that can fix your body from the inside out, figuring out how to reprogram the DNA you were born with, and exploring ways to digitize your brain based on the theory that your mind could live long after your body expires.

“I believe that evolution is a true account of nature,” as Thiel put it. “But I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society.”

But ours is not a sinless world. What happens to the value of human life? Just because people may live longer does not mean that people will live better. I shudder to think of some people I know extending their foolishness for twenty, thirty, forty generations. Especially when a 60 year prison sentence for murder is less than a tenth of your anticipated life time?

A life sentence today may last for sixty, seventy years at most. But what happens when a life sentence means a span of 600 or 700 years. What is the cost and who bears it? We already have welfare families that have not worked in generations, what kind of world would we invite upon ourselves to support such unnecessary largesse?

No society can afford such a radically prolonged life span for so many. But for a privileged few ... there's a possibility. There is but one answer, an elitist dictatorship - which is probably the direction we are headed in regardless of longevity. And they will control the government agencies that decide who receives this blessing of long life. Perhaps they'll call it ObamaLongTermCare and there will most certainly be death panels.

There is a condition to this. As long as your quality of life is good, your health is acceptable, yes, drink to long life. Even if life isn't so good, a so-so life is still better than no life. But when life is an awful, wretched, painful, sorrow-filled experience; when life itself becomes a hateful condition and death is your only release, what if you can't die?

Revelations 9:6 declares that "In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them." This is the Tribulation, when men will long to die but cannot. I cannot imagine a more ironic fate from the hands of a Holy God than to deny death to those who would give anything to live. As stated in Mark 8:36, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

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